Seems a good deal initially but I think I'd rather pay £10 more and have a sub at Find My Past which gives me parish records, passenger lists and other useful stuff as well for the money.

Granted they don't have the same stuff for immigration and worldwide census that ancestry can provide but most libraries now have free access to the library version for their members. The only things you can't search for in the library version are living people and family trees with the exception of some US based ones in the Family Data Collection and other small databases. You also can't "contact" members.

ancestry's living people charges are similar to those at 192.com but there are other cheaper alternatives out there if you just want access for a short time. I have just last week used tracegenie.com which only charges £3.50 for 24 hours access. It's a pain to use and the searches are not that intuitive but if you are prepared to set aside time to get your money's worth out of it, it's incredible value.

The tree thing not an issue if you don't have your tree online with ancestry (and let's face it what sensible researcher would as it gives the company total and perpetual rights over your tree and it could be published on the net even if you've marked your tree as private - go look at Mundia.com which is also owned by ancestry. Even if you close your account and delete your tree, ancestry still retain a copy of whatever was once there). Bearing in mind that ancestry are looking to find a buyer, your data could end up being the property of Lord knows who!

Even though you can't "contact" ancestry members unless you're paid up, you can for free at mundia.com (at least at the moment, it might not last forever). You only need a valid email address to register. You can also post on the free rootsweb.com boards. rootsweb is also an ancestry owned site so you will most likely find a lot of people who are paid up at ancestry anyway.